Ladies and Gentlemen we bring you the very first experimental release of VectorLinux-6.0. This is a brand new ball park for the development team so we would like all with a spare partition to spare help us out here. The really great news is this includes the first Vector with a gui installer.........yes thats right the CD fires up and brings you into gui mode with a point and click interface. It is not complete yet but gets the job done and at a stage where ideas are welcome to make it better. We thank Moe for this as he has put in hundreds of man hours into this project to get it to a usable stage. The big shock is we have decided at least for the interim to use gnome as the base desktop system with lxde as a lighter alternative. I know many will shake there head and maybe take up smoking cigarettes again......... However, gnome offers a plethora of software and utilities that make the end user experience a joy and we have taken this to the Vector level of speed and stability. With all the good that gnome has to offer we were pretty sure it did not have to be slow and brown. So join us in our quest to tame the linux desktop and make yet another remarkable Vector release. The clock starts now..........

The gui installation is a huge improvement for initial user experience.

Question. I just did an install. After the VL and app install was complete the system configuration steps and user setup converted back to the text processes. Is that the current state of development and the expected process for .5?

btw. I did the install on an old Gateway that requires using an existing partition. The process work perfect. It found the existing partition and installed correctly. The step and hints were clear and easy to follow.

Question. I just did an install. After the VL and app install was complete the system configuration steps and user setup converted back to the text processes. Is that the current state of development and the expected process for .5?

Yes thats as far as we have progressed with the gui functionality at this point. We will continue to add functions as we progress towards a final release. This allows us to not only test the upcoming release but the new installer as well.

Don't mind the slimmed down Gnome interface. Reminds me of Ubuntu, but it runs faster. I almost thought that you guys turned into a Debian based distro, haha! (I don't have a problem with that, though... I also run 64 Studio on this PC, and that's Debian based. In fact, one of 64's developers also works directly with the Debian maintainers.)

This one finally runs my Broadcom 4311 wlan adapter nearly perfectly out of the box. I say nearly, as I still have to log in as root, run X, then vlwifi to input the essid and wep key, log out, then log in as user. vlwifi doesn't seem to be retaining the settings. Maybe if I make it as a keyring (is that it?), I wouldn't have any trouble. At least having that working in 6 frees up a USB port; I'm using an older Linksys 802.11b USB adapter for wifi in vl 5.9.

The other minor issue was with the plugins. I had to make a ~/.mozilla/plugins directory in my /$home dir, then installed all the included ones there, except for the java runtime, which I was able to symlink.

Otherwise, it's working out well so far. I might try to see how well wine works in here...

This one finally runs my Broadcom 4311 wlan adapter nearly perfectly out of the box. I say nearly, as I still have to log in as root, run X, then vlwifi to input the essid and wep key, log out, then log in as user. vlwifi doesn't seem to be retaining the settings. Maybe if I make it as a keyring (is that it?), I wouldn't have any trouble. At least having that working in 6 frees up a USB port; I'm using an older Linksys 802.11b USB adapter for wifi in vl 5.9.

Nice to have an alpha. How long can it take before it gets a RC1 ?I agree that even VL5.9 have some problems with wifi. I cannot get a hidden essid to login properly and stable. It is also with a broadcom 43xx card.

I have downloaded this alpha and will play with it tonight !I look forward to gnome and especially lxde. I have tried lxde on xubuntu ((so simple to install)) the other day. It could not handle desktop pager properly. But compiz worked anyway with 2 desktop pages. Have also tried PUD, but it was too simple with only english (I am danish), and further chinese come up sometimes by mistake.For my VL5.9: on www.lxde.org and in the wiki is missing installation instructions for VL. It could be nice to add lxde in that way. I use VL5.9 on a portable with just 600 MHz and just 256 Mb. Every performance benefit is wellcome.

I have downloaded this alpha and will play with it tonight !I look forward to gnome and especially lxde. I have tried lxde on xubuntu ((so simple to install)) the other day. It could not handle desktop pager properly. But compiz worked anyway with 2 desktop pages. Have also tried PUD, but it was too simple with only english (I am danish), and further chinese come up sometimes by mistake.For my VL5.9: on www.lxde.org and in the wiki is missing installation instructions for VL. It could be nice to add lxde in that way. I use VL5.9 on a portable with just 600 MHz and just 256 Mb. Every performance benefit is wellcome.

I downloaded the alpha and played with it for a while. But I was not able to pass through gparted. I have a blank harddisk. It gives me error messages. It wants me to make 3 partitions, where I normally make only 2 (root and swap), but nevermind this was not the problem. gparted is not a friend of mine.

I have downloaded this alpha and will play with it tonight !I look forward to gnome and especially lxde. I have tried lxde on xubuntu ((so simple to install)) the other day. It could not handle desktop pager properly. But compiz worked anyway with 2 desktop pages. Have also tried PUD, but it was too simple with only english (I am danish), and further chinese come up sometimes by mistake.For my VL5.9: on www.lxde.org and in the wiki is missing installation instructions for VL. It could be nice to add lxde in that way. I use VL5.9 on a portable with just 600 MHz and just 256 Mb. Every performance benefit is wellcome.

I downloaded the alpha and played with it for a while. But I was not able to pass through gparted. I have a blank harddisk. It gives me error messages. It wants me to make 3 partitions, where I normally make only 2 (root and swap), but nevermind this was not the problem. gparted is not a friend of mine.

Well what better way for a VL noob to get up to spped. I'm downloading t now and will give it a go this weekend. BTW Does VL have a limit on LILO partitions. My home PC uses XP (Only for Turbo Tax) VL and Mandriva.

gnome is a ram hog, but since i upgraded my pc to 1 gb,i might actually have a good time with it..

Gnome brings so much avaiable software to vector,its going to make the internet configuration and ics the easiest thing in the world. Not to mention all the other gui set up utilities that it has. (psst,having firestarter as default firewall is going to make configuring ports and ics possible to the normal users)

This is a bold decision by the vec team,but i think it is a good one! Vector will definatelly get more attention with this release.

a sweet release indeed! Worth a test drive,once i get my work done on a project (next week hopefully) and backup my stuff..

lxde used to have a nasty bug where the user cannot log in if the dns is not configured in /etc/hosts, i really hope they fixed it

hope i dont meet any showstoppers

hope you upgrade the xorg driver to 1.5 untill the final release

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New features: X.Org server 1.5 brings much better support for hot-pluggable input devices such as tablets, keyboards, or mice; Linux kernel 2.6.26;

Question: New secretary coming in. Will be putting vector standard on her machine. I have played around with Vector 6.0 and, excepting the gparted problem, and the fact that gslapt requires a reboot after each use, no major problems. I can format with 5.9. Assuming I can load 6.0 properly, any reason not to start her on 6.0 beta and then reinstall when the final comes out? I guess the real question is: Once loaded and configured properly, will 6.0 be stable enough for daily use?